Understanding workforce diversity and marginalisation, and meaningful implementation of EDI strategies in nurse education and practice

In recent decades, professional nursing has been transformed in many ways: in education, in its scope of practice, and also in research. Now, nursing is a well-established professional discipline, with university level education. It is widely perceived and promoted as a homogenous profession with its competencies considered to be applicable widely across the world. A shared commonality of experience exists, but there are also many differences. For, on closer inspection, there is a huge diversity among nurses and nursing communities, with regards to their education, practice scope and access to professional opportunities. Differences may include their language, economic background, religion, practice environment, professional autonomy, social values and cultural norms, gender identity and more. Evidence suggests that many minority nurses, with diverse backgrounds across the world experience discrimination and marginalisation (Iheduru-Anderson, 2021, Smith, 2020). In recent years, an acknowledgement of these diversities, and issues of discrimination and marginalisation, has led to some policy efforts to make nursing an inclusive profession in most countries. Within this context, this editorial examines the historical trajectory of inclusive/exclusive debates, and Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategies in professional education and practice.